


Devil's Resting Place

by Khetienn



Category: Shall We Date?: Obey Me!
Genre: Everything hurts and nothing is ok, F/M, Idefk what else to tag this, Lesson 16 (Shall We Date?: Obey Me!) Spoilers, MC is AFAB and uses female pronouns, Multi, Original Character MC - Freeform, You've been warned, dark!AU, no really, unbeta'ed be gentle
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-12-11
Updated: 2020-12-11
Packaged: 2021-03-10 23:35:26
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,575
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28005507
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Khetienn/pseuds/Khetienn
Summary: "Bitterness is thick like blood and cold as a wind sea breeze/If you must drink of me, take of me what you please/I am loathe to say it's the devil's taste/I've been with the devil in the devil's resting place"Belphie can hear the raised voices of his brothers and doors slamming, and then the only sound in his world is Beel's hitched, uneven breathing as his twin sinks to the ground, still holding him in an unbreakable embrace and crying."Belphie, Belphie, where have you been? Why did you... No, no, no, why.... why.... Belphie...." Beel keeps muttering to himself on the same theme. He won't look at Belphie, bewildered and bereft in his arms.Belphie doesn't understand."Water won't clean you, water won't clean you/You only hold yourself to the things you do"- Devil's Resting Place, Laura Marling
Comments: 2
Kudos: 29





	Devil's Resting Place

Belphie doesn't _understand._

One second he had the human's delicate, fragile neck in his grip, savoring the way she struggled and clawed at him so uselessly. Her mouth opened in a silent whimper as she went limp, the light beginning to dim from her eyes. The next second, everything was chaos. 

"Belphie NO!" Something hit him, tackled him against the wall, and stunned, he dropped the human reflexively. It took him another second to understand what was happening. Beel, gentle Beel, always Belphie's protector, held him pinned in place, his head still ringing from the force with which it had hit the wall.

Behind Beel Lucifer swept down upon the human, checking her vitals quickly, while Mammon babbled nonsense and tried to get in the way. Beel was shaking, breathing heavily, and... and _sobbing_ , like his heart was breaking. 

This wasn't the kind of hug Belphie had been looking forward to from his brother. 

Belphie tried to push away from the wall but his efforts against Beel were about as useful as the human's against him. "Let go of me!" he demanded. "Beel!" Beel didn't respond, only shivered harder and kept holding him immobile. "Lucifer!" 

With utmost gentleness, Lucifer had taken the unconscious human into his arms. He turned around for the briefest of seconds only to say, "Beel, hold him," before sprinting down the stairs. His roar shook the house. "ASMO! Go get Barbatos! Satan! I need healing spells up and ready to go!" Mammon dithers for half a second, looking between a distraught Beel and a swiftly disappearing Lucifer, and then vanishes in Lucifer's footsteps. Belphie can hear the raised voices of his brothers and doors slamming, and then the only sound in his world is Beel's hitched, uneven breathing as his twin sinks to the ground, still holding him in an unbreakable embrace and crying. 

"Belphie, Belphie, where have you been? Why did you... No, no, no, why.... why.... Belphie...." Beel keeps muttering to himself on the same theme. He won't look at Belphie, bewildered and bereft in his arms. 

Belphie doesn't understand. 

\---

I couldn't help but smile in response to Belphie's happy grin at being freed. I didn't understand -- there was still one brother to make a pact with, the door shouldn't have opened yet -- but regardless, it was done. He opened his arms to me and laughing, I stepped into them. Maybe now we could fix everyth-

His voice dropped into a low chuckle. His arms tightened and the hair on my body prickled from the wave of energy as he transformed to his demon form. Mouth dry, I tried to take a step back and found that I couldn't free myself. "To think I would be set free by a mere human," he murmured in my ear. "I should thank you properly." His voice was still gentle and sweet, but laced with a dangerous undertone as one hand released me to slide up my arm, to my shoulder, to my neck. Long fingers wrapped around my throat. I gasped sharply. He squeezed. I tried to say his name, but all that would come out was a choked wheeze. "Worthless humans," he said softly. "I've got no further use for you." Holding me off the floor by one hand, ignoring my kicking, my nails dug into his wrist, he caressed my hair softly with the other. "Shhh. Just go to sleep. Let it go."

It hurt, it hurt, it _hurt_. My throat felt like it was being crushed, my lungs were on fire. My heart was racing, my head felt like it would burst. I remembered the time Levi had gotten so angry at me, and Mammon's advice to run. There was no running away now. _Mammon..._ I closed my eyes. My vision was narrowing anyway, darkening. I wished Mammon was here to help me this time. _Please...._

Mammon didn't come. I faded away into the dark in panic and pain. 

When I opened my eyes, I could breathe again, but it was still dark. There was nothing. I squeezed my eyes shut but when I opened them again it didn't help. "Am I dead?" I wondered aloud.

"Hmm, not quite." I almost jumped out of my skin. Whirling, I found a young woman standing behind me. She looked familiar, somehow, and as I stared at her I began to see it. I saw it in the prideful way she held her chin, in the twinkle of her eyes, the playful tone of her voice, the loose way she stood, the kindness in her smile, the slightness of her build. But it wasn't only that. She felt familiar in a deeper way, something I couldn't even begin to explain. 

"I... I know you," I said in wonder.

"I should hope so!" The other woman tossed her hair, but smiled as she did it. "My name is Lilith." 

"Lilith? So.... I am dead." 

Her eyes turned grave. "In a manner of speaking. I... I have to apologize for Belphegor. He's not himself after... after everything." 

"What does that mean, a manner of speaking?" I gestured to the emptiness all around us. "It sure looks like I'm dead." 

Lilith clutched at my hands, almost desperately. "I can help you, but there isn't much time. Please. You have to watch over them for me." 

"Of course, but... help? How?"

"It doesn't matter!" Lilith was growing increasingly frantic. "Please, just say yes!" 

I sucked in a breath. I still wasn't entirely sure what was happening, but I didn't really want to be dead either. "Okay. Yes."

Tears formed in her eyes, and relief washed over her smile. "Thank you," she whispered. Lilith moved to embrace me, but as I raised my hands she began to fade right through them, like mist. A tingle that was both hot and cold at once passed through me as her misty form moved into me and was gone. 

My eyes fly open. I gasp in a painful breath. 

\---

Beel still won't let Belphie go, but he insists on seeing what's happening with the human, so he ends up dragging Belphie down the stairs, one large hand locked around Belphie's wrist. The human is laid out on the library floor. Green and blue light emanates from a hastily inked but precisely drawn spell circle around her as both Satan and Barbatos chant desperately. Asmo stands against the wall, hands fisted over his mouth, eyes wide. Mammon paces, never taking his gaze off the human, a hand ruffling through his perpetually messy white hair. "C'mon, you can't do this to me," he mutters. "Ya gotta come back... I'm supposed to protect you..." His voice breaks. "You can't make the Great Mammon look bad..." 

Beel looks to Lucifer, who is standing closest by the door. "Is she....?"

The eldest brother's mouth is a tight, thin line. "The healing spells were unsuccessful." Cold ruby eyes flick to Belphie. "She was too fragile and the damage was too great for us to help in time. Our only hope now is to call her soul back to her body." 

In the background Mammon continues to pace. "Please please please..." Levi sits on the ground, looking lost. None of his other brothers have even _noticed_ him. 

Lucifer's gaze never wavers. "We'll deal with _this_ later." An abrupt wash of blue, a shiver of power, and Lucifer at his most powerful is dragging Belphie back up to the attic, that _prison_ , never mind Belphie's screaming and struggling, where he locks Belphie in with the entirely mundane _snick_ of a key. His voice is cold, serious, and entirely too quiet as he says, "Leave this room before I'm ready for you and I'll hand you to Lord Diavolo myself."

\---

Belphie doesn't hear much of what happens next. Beel tells him, some, later as he visits. He doesn't see the human jolt back to life, the brothers all but collapsing on her with sobs and relief. He doesn't see the confrontation between Lucifer and Lord Diavolo, where, despite his threats, Lucifer flatly refuses to let Diavolo take Belphie. "It would be a _shame_ if word of what actually happened here got out, wouldn't it?" Lucifer muses. "To think we couldn't adequately protect one of our exchange students... that such a highly placed demon turned against you... no, that wouldn't be good for your reputation at all, would it?" Diavolo takes the hint, and consents to Belphie's indefinite house arrest. 

He isn't there, either, when the brothers gather to hear the truth about their baby sister. He hears it secondhand, from a wondrous Beel, and his stomach drops into nausea as he learns that he nearly snuffed out Lilith's last remaining descendant, her legacy almost destroyed forever. 

He doesn't hear the final consequences of that night with the rest, but he knows, he's a smart demon, deep down he knows when he hears her desolate wail even from the attic. They said _resurrection_ but really the human's now just an embodied soul, the link with her body only established by the ritual, and were she to return to the human world there'd be no link, no power to fuel the bond. She is a soul, nothing more, and she can never go home. The soul is eternal, and the soul remembers, and she'll bear her death marks for all time, the imprint of his fingers forever branded on her skin, but _she's just one small human_. 

_Belphie doesn't understand._

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Okay so I have Thoughts about Lesson 16. I got spoiled through fanfiction but when I got there it... wasn't what I was expecting at all? Like, it's just a thing that happened and no one's worried about it? This is a darker, more realistic take on what went down. 
> 
> I'm so sorry.
> 
> (Updates are likely to be sporadic and at random, I wrote this bit because it's literally stuck in my head and I needed to blow off some stress from studying for my GIANT exam on Saturday, and I don't even know how long this is going to be, but I guess we'll find out!)


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